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Attorneys Supporting Repeal

(Any member of the Oregon State Bar wishing to add his or her name to the following Statement may do so by sending an email to that effect to davidm@oadp.org.)

Statement Concerning Oregon’s Death Penalty

We, the undersigned members of the Oregon State Bar, hereby assert our opposition to capital punishment and our support for a ballot measure which would remove the death penalty from Article I, Section 40, of the Oregon Constitution and ORS 163.105 et seq., for some or all of the following reasons:

The death penalty puts innocent lives at risk. Since 1976, 143 condemned individuals have been freed nationally because of actual innocence or profound doubt as to their guilt. Of the more than 1265 persons executed since 1976, it is highly likely that some were innocent. During the same period, six people in Oregon have been exonerated of murder convictions, several of which could potentially have resulted in death sentences.

The death penalty does not deter murder. Almost all criminologists agree that the death penalty is not a deterrent. In fact, the murder rate in death penalty states is higher, on the whole, than the murder rate in states without the death penalty.

There are better ways to serve the needs of victims of violent crime. Prompt imposition of lifelong imprisonment, coupled with serious and sustained attention to the needs of survivors, constitutes a wiser and more humane response to homicide.

The death penalty is costly. The millions of taxpayer dollars spent annually on the death penalty could be used for many purposes that would make us demonstrably safer: additional police on the streets; domestic violence and child abuse prevention programs; drug courts and treatment; early childhood education—to name just a few.

The death penalty is arbitrary and unfair. Many of the murders for which death has been imposed in Oregon are indistinguishable from the murders which have resulted in life imprisonment. The death penalty is applied unequally to the poor, people of color, and those with diminished mental capacity. Such considerations are intolerable where life and death are concerned.

The death penalty creates additional victims. No juror should be asked to decide whether an offender should live or die, and no corrections officer should be asked to participate in the killing of another human being. Their mental health should not be jeopardized where there is no clear and compelling benefit to society.

While there may be room for philosophical debate over the morality of capital punishment, we agree with former Justices Blackmun, Powell and Stevens, all of whom voted to reinstate it in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), that our nation’s experiment with the death penalty has failed and should be abandoned. As the American Law Institute has found, death penalty statutes in this country, including Oregon’s, do not meet and are likely never to meet “basic concerns of fairness in process and outcome.” Oregonians should repeal our state’s use of capital punishment.

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Common Questions

Capital punishment is legal in the U.S. state of Oregon. The first execution under the territorial government was in 1851. Capital punishment was made explicitly legal by statute in 1864, and executions have been carried out exclusively at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem since 1904. The death penalty was outlawed between 1914 and 1920, again between 1964 and 1978, and then again between a 1981 Oregon Supreme Court ruling and a 1984 ballot measure. Since 1904, about 60 individuals have been executed in Oregon. Aggravated murder is the only crime subject to the penalty of death under Oregon law.